France also felt the degradation of this gift, and did not hasten to reward the donor of it as he had expected. She left him for some months in Brussels, alone with the shame of his unworthy action, until at last an advocate of talent, Maitre Cléry, succeeded in obtaining from President Carnot the repeal of the decree which had banished the Duke from France. He thereupon returned in haste to his beloved Chantilly, where he took up again his former existence, with the difference that when he received at his table the members of the Academy he used to tell them: “Maintenant vous êtes ici chez vous, messieurs” (“Now you are at home”). It was related at the time that a member of the learned Assembly took this opportunity to entreat the Duke to change the place of a certain picture which he thought had not been put where it ought to have been hung. Henri d’Orleans’ eyes flashed with indignation at this audacity, and drawing himself up very haughtily he said: “Vous vous oubliez, monsieur” (“You forget yourself, sir”), to which, nothing daunted, the impertinent visitor remarked: “Mais, puisque vous venez de dire que nous sommes chez nous, monseigneur” (“But you have just said that we are at home, sir”).
Maitre Cléry, to whom the Prince owed his return from exile, did not know him personally, and had never been among those whom he had invited to his receptions. Consequently his action when he undertook to plead the cause of the Duc d’Aumale with the President of the Republic was absolutely disinterested. He had, however, expected a word of thanks for his intervention in the matter. That word was a long time in coming, too long, perhaps, in the opinion of some people. When at last the celebrated advocate received an invitation to lunch at Chantilly, he remarked that it came like mustard after dinner—“comme de la moutarde après dîner.”
The last years of the life of the Duc d’Aumale were saddened by uncongenial family stories and incidents, in which his nephews—so gossip said—figured in rather an unpleasant light. Angry beyond words at these rumours, his relations with his people became more and more distant and estranged, and the big family parties that he liked to gather round him in former times took place no more. He kept himself among a small circle of friends, and in the society of Madame de Clinchamps, a former lady-in-waiting of the Duchesse d’Aumale, whom he married secretly, and who—and this is very characteristic of him—he left very badly off after his death, with nothing but a small pittance out of his many millions. Madame de Clinchamps was invariably amiable. She appeared at the lunches given at Chantilly, and visitors found her sitting by the fire in the tapestried drawing-room, where the Duc used to receive his guests. She did not put herself forward in any way, and never attempted even to do the honours of the place. She must have really loved the Duc, or else she would never have put up with the slights he showered upon her, or accepted the false position in which he left her, and her devotion to him never failed up to his death, after which she retired to a small house on the edge of the Forest of Chantilly, where, at the time I am writing, she lives in strict retirement and in comparative poverty.
I have met most of the celebrities of modern France at the Duc d’Aumale’s lunches. He was very catholic as to the people whom he invited, and only required them to be amiable and to listen well to him, without attempting to interrupt. Among his great friends was Jules Lemaitre, the Academician, an amusing, intelligent little man, rather void of manners, who buzzed about in a way that would have been aggressive had it not been so funny. He was full of wit, but sometimes said gauche things, the value of which did not appear to strike his otherwise critical mind. For instance, one day, whilst the Duc was showing to his visitors a lovely collection of miniatures of the Royal Family of France, from the end of the eighteenth century, he interrupted him with the question: “And where, sir, do you keep the letters of M. Cuvillier Fleury?” The late Duc de la Trémouille was standing next to me; we looked at each other, and smiled. Evidently a member of the French Academy of the end of the nineteenth century could not feel the slightest interest in anything else but Cuvillier Fleury, the bourgeois tutor of a bourgeois pupil, such as the Duc d’Aumale had proved himself to be in the eyes of a certain number of the people whom he had made his friends.
Bonnat, the painter, was also a frequent visitor at Chantilly, and his portrait of the Duc is one of the best pictures that ever came from his brush. The Prince is represented in the uniform of a general, perhaps the same which he wore on the day when, with a cruelty one would have preferred not to have seen in him, he condemned Marshal Bazaine to an ignominious death.
It is related that the Duc d’Aumale used to say that he would like to die at Chantilly, and that he had even left directions how his funeral was to take place. In them he expressed a wish to lie in state in the chapel for a day or two, near the hearts of the Princes de Condé, buried there and respected by the Revolution of 1789. This desire was not destined to be fulfilled. He breathed his last in Sicily, at his castle near Palermo, and his mortal remains were brought back straight to the family vault at Dreux. Chantilly stands empty and deserted now, save on the days when tourists invade it, and roam in the rooms which have rung with women’s soft laughter and listened to so many momentous and interesting conversations. No one, even among the old servants still left in charge of the place, ever talks of the Duc d’Aumale, and mention is only made of the former lords of the Castle, of those illustrious and unfortunate Princes de Condé, the souls of whom still fill the old walls their fame has immortalised for ever. In the Gallery des Batailles, as it is called, the sword of the hero of Rocroy still hangs, tarnished with age, but now no reverential hand ever lifts it; only the heavy fingers of a sleepy housemaid dusts it now and then. The pictures, the portraits, the works of art are in the same place they occupied when an intelligent master had arranged them with loving care. In the long dining-room the table at which so many celebrities and high-born people sat is still there, with chairs standing round it; in the drawing-room the two arm-chairs the Duc and Madame de Clinchamps used to occupy are in the same place; and in the library the inkstand has been left open with its pen lying beside it. Everything seems a little dingy, a little empty, a little forsaken, everything has the appearance of one of those vast temples of old, whence, according to the words of the Russian poet, “the idols have fled.”
CHAPTER XIII
The Presidency of Marshal MacMahon
When a coalition of the different parties who constituted the Right in the National Assembly overturned M. Thiers, it was felt everywhere, though perhaps none would say it aloud, that this event was but the first step towards the re-establishment of a monarchy, which could only be that of the Orleans family. In fact, the Chamber was almost entirely composed of Orleanists. The few Bonapartists were too timid to come out openly as such after the catastrophes that had accompanied the fall of the Empire, but they were determined nevertheless to do their best to bring the Prince Imperial back to France as Emperor. There were but few extreme Radicals in the Assembly. Gambetta was perhaps the most advanced member in that direction, together with Jules Ferry and Jules Favre, and their Radicalism would be considered Conservatism nowadays. In fact, the Left, or what was called the Left, resembled rather an opposition as it is understood in England, than a revolutionary party such as later on tried to snatch the government of the country into its hands. France was still under the influence of the eighteen years of Imperial regime it had gone through, and respect for authority had not yet died. The elections, which had been conducted under the eyes of the enemy, had brought back a large monarchical majority to the Assembly. That majority knew very well that so long as M. Thiers remained at the head of the Republic, a restoration, either of the Comte de Chambord, the Comte de Paris, or the Prince Imperial, was not to be thought of. The little man would have defended his own person in defending the Republic. His manner of crushing the Commune, indeed, had shown that he would not hesitate before a display of force, and would be quite capable of sending to prison the leaders of any movement to destroy the government over which he presided.
But when M. Thiers had been put aside, the field was free to the Royalists, and in order to pave the way to a restoration they offered the Presidency of the Republic to the Duc d’Aumale, in the hope that he would see his way to resign his functions to his nephew, and be strong enough to bring him back in triumph to the Elysée.
The Duc d’Aumale accepted. Whether he would have fulfilled the hopes that had been centred in him is another question. My opinion is that he would have shown himself even more respectful of the Republic who had called him to her head than M. Thiers or Marshal MacMahon. But we need not go into suppositions, as his election did not take place on account of the Bonapartists refusing to vote for him, being frightened at the thought that he might feel tempted to accomplish another coup d’état, and at all events would exclude them from the ranks of his advisers. The Duc d’Aumale once put aside, there remained but two people whose names could have rallied around them the different parties that constituted the Assembly; they were Marshal Canrobert and Marshal MacMahon.